Plastic bags have been replacing paper bags in the United States since the 1970s for the grocery and retail products industries due to the superior and inherent moisture resistant properties and strength of plastic among other things. For these industries, these plastic bags usually are of the T-shirt type which include front and rear wall sections integrally connected together by gussetted side walls and connected at the bottoms to define a closed bottom on the bag. At least a part of the front and rear wall sections are open at the tops to define a mouth portion. Laterally spaced handles integral with the front, rear and gussetted side wall sections extend upwardly from opposed sides of the mouth portion.
These types of bags for the grocery and retail products industries have been marketed by the assignee of the present invention as the highly commercially successful QUIKMATE.RTM. bagging system, set forth in United States Reissue Patent Re. 33,264, reissued Jul. 17, 1990, and which includes a plurality of such T-shirt bags formed into a bag pack and mounted on a rack for being opened and loaded one at a time and removed from the rack after being loaded.
Notwithstanding the success of plastic bags and replacement of paper bags in the above discussed grocery and retail products industries, paper bags have continued to be used in the fast food restaurant industry for packaging and carrying hot foods. However, there are several problems associated with the use of paper bags in the fast food restaurant industry, such as the difficulty in handling of such paper bags, the inherent opaque nature of such paper bags resulting in the inability to see the hot food items packed in the bag and resulting mistakes in filling customers' orders, productivity costs, inherent weakness in such bags when they become moist or the like, etc. On the other hand, plastic bags have not been used for packaging and transporting hot foods in the fast food restaurant industry primarily because of the problem which occurs with moisture collecting on the insides of the plastic bag when filled with hot foods. This moisture will condensate and cause the food to get soggy and will wet the hand of the user when reaching into the bag.